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"Conversion narrative"
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Old Norse Folklore
The medieval northern world consisted of a vast and
culturally diverse region both geographically, from roughly
Greenland to Novgorod and culturally, as one of the last areas of
Europe to be converted to Christianity . Old Norse
Folklore explores the complexities of thisfascinating world in
case studies and theoretical essays that connect orality and
performance theory to memory studies, and myths relating to
pre-Christian Nordic religion to innovations within late medieval
pilgrimage song culture.
Old Norse Folklore provides critical new perspectives
on the Old Norse world, some of which appear in this volume for the
first time in English. Stephen A. Mitchell presents emerging
methodologies by analyzing Old Norse materials to offer a better
understandings ofunderstanding of Old Norse materials. He examines,
interprets, and re-interprets the medieval data bequeathed to us by
posterity-myths, legends, riddles, charms, court culture,
conversion narratives, landscapes, and mindscapes-targeting largely
overlooked, yet important sources of cultural insights.
eBook
Narrating Conversion in Augustine’s Notes on Job
This article explores the themes of repentance and conversion in Augustine’s Notes on Job. Despite its fragmentary and often improvisational character, Augustine’s theological vision in the Notes presents Job as an exemplum of ongoing conversion. Though not portrayed as a sinner, Job undergoes spiritual transformation, embodying the human need for continual repentance and deeper understanding of God. This treatment aligns with Augustine’s depiction of other biblical figures, such as St. Paul and the Prodigal Son, whose stories serve as models of conversion. By closely examining the rhetorical and theological function of Job in the Notes, the article suggests that Augustine’s portrayal was meant to guide readers on the path toward salvation. In doing so, it contributes to a broader understanding of how Augustine constructs conversion narratives within his biblical commentaries.
Journal Article
The Lonely Girl. External Factors in the Conversion and Failed Ransom of the Turkish–Algerian Fatima (1608–1622)
Research into various aspects of slavery and the related conversions has multiplied in recent years. This contribution investigates the case of Fatima, a young woman belonging to the Turkish–Algerian elite, who was captured in 1608 by the Tuscan Knights of Saint Stephen. Rescued by her parents and entrusted to some Corsican merchants for her safe return home, she remained in Calvi (Corsica) because she embraced Christianity. Thus, the local bishop pretended to keep her under his protection. Because of her conversion, her homecoming became considerably more complicated until it was decreed impracticable. The intervention of Fatima’s parents led to the opening of protracted negotiations between the political (Algerian, Ottoman, Spanish, Genoese) and ecclesiastical (Papal, Episcopal, Trinitarian) authorities. In dissatisfaction, the Algerian governors lashed out at one hundred and thirty Christian captives in Algiers whose rescue operation by Trinitarian redeemers was suddenly halted. Historiography, to narrate this case study, has paid attention predominantly to Spanish records and explained the political and economic mechanisms of the rescue machine with all its complications. Through other unpublished Spanish, Vatican and Genoese sources, this article focuses with a micro-glocal lens on the many psychological pressures used by political and religious agencies that accompanied such a young person by leveraging the decisive role of the Ecclesiastical authorities.
Journal Article
The Tension Between Buddhism and Science Within Contemporary Chinese Buddhists: A Case Study on the Religious Conversion Narrative Among Monastics in Larung Gar Buddhist Academy
This article delves into the perception of monastics from Larung Gar Buddhist Academy of Western China concerning the intertwining relationship between Buddhism and science, along with the impact of this perception on their worldview and life trajectory. Many monastics at Larung Gar Buddhist Academy initially held a high regard for science, dismissing Buddhism as superstition. However, upon gaining a comprehensive understanding of Buddhism through various opportunities, they came to believe that certain tenets of Buddhism are compatible with science, even suggesting that Buddhism could address some of the methodological and epistemological limitations of science and offer solutions to some issues that science is unable to resolve. This ultimately led them to embrace Buddhism and renounce worldly life. This study employs a case study to investigate the understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and science amongst the general public in contemporary China, an area underexplored by previous scholarship that predominantly concentrated on the philosophical scrutiny of the apologetic discourses towards the reconciliation between Buddhism and science of influential Buddhist ascetics and lay practitioners. Also, this study endeavors to demonstrate that despite the ongoing secularization of contemporary Chinese Buddhism in the “public sphere”, within the “private sphere” of Chinese Buddhism, there remain individuals who are pursuing the religious, sacred, and transcendental dimensions of Buddhism.
Journal Article
“This Is a Progression, Not Conversion”: Narratives of First-Generation Bahá’ís
This paper discusses the concept of religious conversion in the Bahá’í Faith through conversion narratives of first-generation Bahá’ís. Through life story interviews, the converts narrate their process of becoming Bahá’í as “not converting”, which aligns with a principle of the Bahá’í Faith called “progressive revelation”. Religious conversion has frequently been described in the literature as a radical, sudden, dramatic transformation–often following a personal crisis and seemingly entails a definite break with one’s former identity. Consequently, religious conversion studies have focused on the subjective experiences of the rapid changes in the lives and identities of individuals. However, such perspectives have, until now, focused mainly on Christianity and Christian models and have not adequately addressed religious conversion models in other Abrahamic religions, such as the Bahá’í Faith. The paradigm of conversion focuses our attention on the ways particular theologies shape life stories of conversion and what kind of narratives social scientists will include in the corpus of conversion. Therefore, this research asks to broaden the social scientific paradigms of religious conversion through the case study of the Bahá’í Faith.
Journal Article
Conversions of Word and Kind in King Lear
Throughout most of Western Christian history, conversion has been a transformative reorientation of the self toward a higher order of being. People tend to use the words conversion and transformation interchangeably, but it is important to note that the two words designate two different kinds of event. Conversion has its basis in movement. A conversion is a \"turning in position, direction, destination\". Transformation certainly often involves some kind of motion, but it is not movement based, whereas conversion is a process of reorienting oneself within a field of things, persons, practices, ideas, and discourses in terms of hearing, seeing, speaking, feeling, thinking, and touching. That makes it strongly body-based. So conversion is an embodied and spatial practice. It is also a spatial practice that changes the character of the space in which it unfolds, transforming a neutral spatial surround into a meaningful place.
Journal Article
Between Zoroastrian Mytho-History and Islamic Hagiography: Trajectories of Literary Exchange
The paper presents a comparative analysis of the Pahlavi “Story of Jōišt ī Friyān”, comparing it with three other tales, which span several hundred years and belong to several cultural traditions. By isolating structural and content-related features from the narrative core of these tales and setting them into relation with each other, the present author attempts to answer the following questions. Are there meaningful parallels between these four tales, which would suggest literary borrowing? And, if there are, would it be possible to identify one of them as the primary source of the others? The study is intended to contribute to our understanding of the process of literary exchange between Zoroastrians and Muslims in early Mediaeval Iran.
Journal Article
The Sachem and the Minister
This essay examines the Indigenous social and diplomatic context behind New England Protestant missionary use of the spiritual question, or the postsermon question-and-answer session—a genre in which English authors recorded the questions asked and answered by potential Indigenous converts in order to showcase their readiness for salvation. The first recorded use of the question-and-answer session in the New England missionary context came during John Eliot's 1646 attempted proselytization of the Massachusett sachem Cutshamekin. By looking closely at Cutshamekin's linguistic and diplomatic history, I illustrate the connection between the question-and-answer session and Indigenous treaty-making practices. The generic relationship between treaty making and the question-and-answer session meant that Indigenous participants often approached the sessions as a forum for negotiating and renegotiating the terms of their prior agreements with the English. In providing an alternative generic history to these sessions, I illustrate the ways in which colonial genre formation resulted from active discursive collaboration between Indigenous people and English settlers.
Journal Article
Confessional identity and models of aristocratic conversion in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hungary
This article explores the intricate relationship between representations and social practices in the context of aristocratic conversion, non-conversion and marriage. The autobiography of a Calvinist magnate woman, who lived in a mixed marriage and resisted conversion, is discussed and interpreted as a non-conversion narrative. It is compared to other extant documentation (both ego-documents and third-person narratives) regarding the conversion to Catholicism of four aristocratic men, whose political and social positions were enhanced as a result of conversion. The construction of Habsburg rule and its concomitant pressure for Catholicism provides the common political context of both eighteenth-century Transylvania and seventeenth-century Habsburg Hungary, where these stories take place. Offering a further comparative perspective, the study aims to highlight the similarities and differences between Hungarian and European accounts. It also pinpoints the underlying similarities within the conversion models of rival confessions (Catholic and Protestant) and brings to the fore the social practices that entailed the crossing of confessional boundaries. Its most surprising finding is that in the propagandistic climate of the confessional age even the autobiographical narrative was turned into a tool of propaganda against mixed marriages. Amid this confessional rivalry, not only were the appeal of female agency and the story of conversion for love and marriage lost but, in Habsburg Hungary, politics was also excluded from conversion models due to the ambivalent relationship of the elite to the foreign king. Similarly to patterns identified in other regions of Europe, martyrdom played a significant role in both Protestant and Catholic conversion models.
Journal Article